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Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Regular readers will know that I'm prone to dabbling in palaeoart depicting the environments and animals of the Wealden Supergroup, the 18 million year stretch of Early Cretaceous time represented by mud-and sandstone deposits across the southern UK. Recently, I've been updating some existing Wealden work as well as producing some new stuff of other Wealden species. With no time to produce a new post of substance, here's a bumper 'picture of the day'-type post. Initially, I was going to chuck something like ten images on here, but time has run short and I'll have to split it in two.

Iguanodon bernissartensis: thumb wars

Two Iguanodon bernissartensis, the quintessential Wealden iguanodont, decide to settle their differences, while members of their herd watch on.

Poor old Iguanodon doesn't get the attention it used to, and a lot palaeoart we do see of it tends to focus on tried and tested behaviours: lots of standing about and eating, but not much else. In this new painting, I've attempted to show two big Iguanodon individuals settling an intra-specific dispute via use of thumb spikes. Long-term readers may recall that we've covered iguanodont thumb spikes before, and that I. bernissartensis has especially big ones. Here, they've been swinging their thumbs at each other's soft bits, causing deep, bloody wounds. This might seem extreme, but there are plenty of modern animals which take intraspecific fights to similarly gory levels - elephant seals were a key inspiration here. I imagine battling Iguanodon would look like an armed sumo-wrestling match, albeit with longer tails and less rice. Note that you can see the breath of several animals here: Wealden winters are not meant to be especially warm.

Rebbachisaurids vs. Neovenatorsalerii redux

Carcharodontosaurian Neovenator salerii stalks a pair of rebbachisaurid sauropods, using darkness as cover.

A while back I posted about dinosaur predation, noting that modern animal predator acts are often far less gladiatorial and epic than we might imagine. It's this slow, considered approach to predation which I'm attempting to show here, as the carcharodontosaur Neovenator stalks two rebbachisaurid sauropods in the dead of night. The idea is that the Neovenator has much better eyesight than the sauropods, who know they're in trouble, but can't really respond adequately. Note the rain: some recent models of Wealden palaeoclimates suggest it was wetter than previously modelled (albeit with very high evaporation rates for much of the year).

Anteophthalmosuchus hooleyi vs. Hypsilophodon foxii, redux

Large goniopholidid Anteophthalmosuchus hooleyi takes advantage of a flooding river to hunt two stranded Hypsilophodon foxii.

Speaking of rain, we know that some parts of the Wealden were prone to flooding following particularly intense downpours. That's good news for animals adapted for powerful swimming, but less welcome to species which prefer dry land. Here, in this reworked painting, the large Wealden goniopholidid Anteophthalmosuchus hooleyi has found a stranded pair of adult and juvenile Hypsilophodon foxii, and is taking full advantage of the situation. Goniopholodids are a group of almost-crocodiles characterised by long forelimbs, interlocking scutes and overbitten jaws - you can read more about them here.

Eotyrannus lengi: firestarter, redux

Early tyrannosauroid Eotyrannus lengi stalks the edge of such a wildfire.

What else does rain bring? Sometimes, lightning. When introduced to a parched Wealden landscape, lightning strikes caused short-lived canopy fires which, ultimately, created conditions ideal for fossil preservation. In this reworked painting, a fully-feathered tyrannosauroid Eotyrannus lengi is prowling the periphery of a Wealden canopy fire to grab any animals flushed out by the flames.

The tiny wars of Wesserpeton evansae, redux

Two Wesserpeton evansae get in each other's faces, because some animals are just jerks.

OK, enough about Wealden weather. Here's a reworked version of two of the Wealden's tiniest tetrapods - indeed, some of the smallest fossil tetrapods of all - facing off in leaf litter. Recently named Wesserpeton evansae,these are albanerpetontids, very small amphibians which only died out a few million years ago. The 35 mm snout-vent length of these animals did nothing to temper their ferocity, and numerous jaws of Wesserpeton have healed fractures and breaks from intraspecific tussles. The animals in this picture are speaking the aggressive body language of modern salamanders as a prelude to their conflict. Two sauropods hang around in the background because, hey, it's called the Age of Dinosaurs for a reason. Some people have suggested this image borders on the trippy and surreal. Stay off the shrooms, kids.

Rebbachisaurids and chums

Lower Cretaceous rebbachisaurids and giant sauropod 'Angloposeidon' look for water in this desiccating Wealden lake.

I do like rebbachisaurids, that group of sauropods who didn't get the memo about long necks. They're only represented by scrappy remains in the Wealden (a scapula) which is enough to tell us they were there, but not substantial enough to carry a name. Here, a few individuals are digging around a rapidly drying lake-bed to find a substantial source of water: digging elephants were the inspiration for this scene. In the background, probable brachiosaurid 'Angloposeidon' struts its stuff. It's meant to be walking particularly tall - I like the idea that fossil animals would carry themselves in different, characteristic ways, just as modern animals do. A pink gnathosaurine pterosaur has snuck into the foreground, just because.

A lesser-seen Wealden scene: the Hastings Beds palaeobiota

Finally for now, here's one more new painting. This is a reconstruction of a swollen river representing part of the Hastings Beds, the oldest deposits of the Wealden, complete with local reptile fauna. The animals shown here are really poorly known: titanosaur 'Pelorosaurus' becklesii (bits of forelimb), possible carcharodontosaurian Becklespinax altispinax (three dorsal vertebrae), eucryptodiran turtle Hylaeochelys belli (a shell), and the possible azhdarchoid previously known as 'Palaeornis cliftii' (humerus). So yes, take the 'restorations' of these animals with an evaporite mine of salt: they're really just better known, fairly 'generic' representatives of groups represented by these Wealden taxa, air-dropped into a Wealden setting. Becklespinax is obviously modelled closely on Concavenator, as they seem to be pretty closely related and have a similar taste in dorsal ornamentation. I gave Becklespinax a more vertical anterior sail margin however, as indicated by the fossil. There's an article waiting to be written on palaeoart like this - should we even bother 'reconstructing' poorly known scenes and species? I clearly think we should, but we'll have to discuss the reasons why another time.

I'm just now realising that there's a lot of confrontation in these images. Come back soon for a more placid, relaxed set of pictures in part 2...

Monday, 11 May 2015

Upper Jurassic pterosaur Cuspicephalus scarfi, a species of some uncertain affinity, now confidently restored as a wukongopterid. How come? Read on. If you'd like a print of this image, please head to my print store.

One of the most significant pterosaur discoveries of recent years are the wukongopterids: small, upper Jurassic pterosaurs unknown before 2009 and most familiar in popular circles for Darwinopterus modularis. These pterosaurs are renowned for providing a morphological bridge between the two major stages of pterosaur evolution: the loose group of long-tailed species which dominated the Triassic and Jurassic phases of pterosaur history, and the Pterodactyloidea, short-tailed, large-skulled creatures which represent a second, better known phase of pterosaur evolution.

The manner in which wukongopterids link these groups will be familiar to many. Instead of showing a mosaic of basal and derived characteristics as expected from any species slotting into a evolutionary 'gap', their heads and necks developed a anatomies like those of pterodactyloids while their bodies and limbs retained features typical of earlier pterosaurs (Lü et al. 2010). Wukongopteridae is generally considered the sister taxon to the Pterodactlyoidea, the two forming the clade Monofenestrata after their shared attribute of combined nasal and antorbital openings. To date, all wukongopterids have been recovered from the Middle/Late Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation of China and, thanks to many complete specimens, their anatomy is already quite well known. The number of valid wukongopterid species remains uncertain: at least seven have been named, but some authors suggest these are oversplit to such an extent that they should all be synonymised into one species, D. modularis (Lü et al. 2012). This is yet to be investigated in detail but, if correct, note that wukongopterid posterboy D. modularis does not have nomenclatural priority. At least one other wukongopterid species was named a few months before D. modularis; two were if you take the 2010 paper version of the description as the ‘true’ publication date of D. modularis, not the 2009 online release.

Wukongopterids are not the only pterosaurs shedding light on the origins of the Pterodactyloidea. The recent discovery of another obviously ‘transitional’ taxon, the Late Jurassic, Solnhofen ‘Painten pro-pterodactyloid’ (Tischlinger and Frey 2014), seems to present a step towards pterodactyloid anatomy from that presented by wukongopterids. The only known specimen of this animal, which is privately owned and thus remains nameless, also shows some modularity of evolution with the body and limbs retaining hallmarks of earlier pterosaur evolution, while the skull has developed into something very similar to Jurassic ctenochasmatoids, especially Pterodactylus antiquus.

A crucial question concerning these new monofenestratan pterosaurs is how we recognise them without evidence of their combined ‘early pterosaur’ bodies and ‘pterodactyloid’ heads and necks. All current diagnoses of these pterosaurs rely on this combination of characteristics and, by necessity, need relatively complete specimens for identification. What can be done with fragmentary specimens, the likes of which comprise most pterosaur fossils? At least two teams of authors have suggested that limb proportions of non-pterodactyloid monofenestratans are characteristic so, as long as sufficient limb material is known, their isolated bodies have some chance of being identified. But what about their strikingly pterodactyloid-like skulls? In isolation, these bear so much resemblance to those of Jurassic pterodactyloids like Germanodactylus and Pterodactylus (above) that referral outside of Pterodactyloidea is unlikely without an associated, 'early-grade' body.

This is an issue my University of Portsmouth colleagues David Martill, Michael O’Sullivan and I tackled in a new (open access) paper, published today in Contributions to Zoology (Witton et al. 2015). Our interest in this problem is not purely theoretical, this paper picking up questions set down three years ago in the description of Cuspicephalus scarfi, a poorly-known British Jurassic monofenestratan (Martill and Etches 2012). Represented only from a partial skull (below) sharing similarities with both wukongopterids and the pterodactyloid Germanodactylus, Cuspicephalus remained of uncertain affinity when first described (Martill and Etches 2012 – an overview of this paper can be found at Dave Hone’s Archosaur Musings). In the same publication, Martill and Etches remarked that another European Jurassic pterosaur only known from cranial material (jaw tips), Normannognathus wellnhoferi (below), suffered similar problems to Cuspicephalus, its once sensible pterodactyloid identification (Buffetaut et al. 1998) now being questionable with wukongopterids on the scene. Taking the Martill and Etches study as our cue, we decided to take a closer look at the characteristics of non-pterodactyloid monofenestratan crania, and apply our findings to these two poorly-known European pterosaurs.

I don’t want to rehash our anatomical comparisons in full here – the paper is free for all to read, so you can easily find these details there – but we concluded that yes, wukongopterid skulls are identifiable in isolation - we don't need associated postcrania to identify them. Their skulls are quite generalised in construction and best diagnosed by a combination of 16 character states relating to skull shape, features of the orbit, dentition and cranial crest anatomy, but we also found one character more-or-less unique to the group: an atypically long nasoantorbital fenestra. In exceeding 50% of the jaw length, only two derived Cretaceous pterodactyloid clades (istiodactylids and azhdarchoids) can boast longer nasoantorbital openings than wukongopterids. We also found that the ‘Painten pro-pterodactyloid’ also has its own take on monofenestratan cranial anatomy: like wukongopterids, it is best distinguished via a combination of features, but details of its dentition provide genuine apomorphies.

When applying these findings to our poorly-represented European specimens, we found virtually all evaluable features of Cuspicephalus (13 of 16) matched those of the wukongopterid character complex, it even bearing that especially long nasoantorbital fenestra. By contrast, it differs from the ‘Painten pro-pterodactyloid’ and ‘generic’-looking pterodactyloids such as Germanodactylus quite markedly. I’m happy that, as part of our means of demonstrating this, we managed to get some new details of Germanodactylus cristatus anatomy into the literature. There are specimens of this animal showing really big exoccipital processes (flaring projections anchoring neck muscles at the back of the skull - see illustration, above), but they remain relatively poorly documented. These processes not only have bearings on distinguishing Germanodactylus from Cuspicephalus, but might help resolve disputes about the placement of Germanodactylus among Pterodactyloidea (the relationships of this animal are controversial, but big exoccipitals are only known in dsungaripterid pterosaurs, one of the suggested phylogenetic homes of this taxon). The only feature really distinguishing Cuspicephalus from wukongopterids are some minor details of its anterior tooth placement, which we see as relatively little concern given strong similarities elsewhere and propensity for dental variation among even closely related pterosaurs. We conclude that the close relationship between Cuspicephalus and Darwinopterus suggested by Martill and Etches (2012) is likely, and go further in suggesting Cuspicephalus is a member of Wukongopteridae itself - the first to occur outside of China.

The picture is not so straightforward for Normannognathus however. Most of the characters once used to suggest Normannognathus was related to certain pterodactyloids are now realised as features seen across Monofenestrata, and, in being represented by only jaw tips and one tooth, there's not much to compare with other pterosaurs. A suite of features seen in Normannognathus (including crest height, upturned jaws, dental characteristics and midline jaw grooves) are found in ctenochasmatoid pterodactyloids, and we tentatively suggest it might have some link to this group. However, without more data, it’s hard to be certain exactly where in Monofenestrata this species belongs. Admitting defeat with Normannognathus suggests that our abilities to distinguish types of monofenestratan skulls remain a little limited, even after dedicated study – anything less than a near-complete skull (like the Cuspicepahlus holotype) might prove a challenge to identify.

Cuspicephalus was a relative giant compared to other wukongopterids: that's the second biggest wukongopterid (D. robustodens) on the left. Still, they're not enormous animals overall, as demonstrated by the use of a European robin (Erithacus rubecula) for scale. From Witton et al. 2015.

Are there any bigger-picture implications to our paper beyond taxonomy? Accepting that this is not a 'game changing' paper, we've at least started adding depth to our understanding of wukongopterid pterosaurs, which I’m happy about. Because these animals were previously only known from a very restricted pocket of space and time (Callovian/Oxfordian strata of China), their identification in Europe allows us to start appreciating the geographic and temporal range this group. Cuspicepahlus occurs in late-Kimmeridgian stage rocks, inferring that wukongopterids enjoyed at least 5-10 million years of evolutionary history, spread across Jurassic Laurasia.

Moreover, Cuspicephalus gives us an insight into the disparity of wukongopterids. It is the first wukongopterid with really obvious morphological distinction to previously known Chinese species, which are distinguished by such minor details that, as noted above, their taxonomy has been questioned. Cuspicephalus possesses a much longer, lower skull than any Chinese wukongopterid, as well as packing in more teeth at the anterior end of its jaws. It’s difficult to say what that means functionally, although we speculate that greater jaw reach and ability to handle small, slippery prey might be related to these features. Cuspicephalus is also considerably larger than its relatives in China, its skull exceeding 300 mm in length to make it one of the biggest Jurassic pterosaur skulls known. Interestingly, this does not translate into a particularly large animal overall: the heads of wukongopterids are proportionally large, and our wingspan estimate for Cuspicephalus (based on skull/wingspan ratios in other wukongopterids) is a relatively modest 1.2 m. The largest Jurassic pterosaurs span well over 2 m, so it remains moderately sized at best. However, its wingspan is still a lot larger than any other known wukongopterid however, which can be measured as spanning no more than 884 mm.

We're not quite done with Jurassic pterosaurs here yet: several on-going projects on the functionality of these pterosaurs, some of which are in the publication system, should be emerging in a few months. Hopefully, we won't be waiting long for them...

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Who is this 'Mark Witton' chap?

Dr Mark Witton is a palaeontologist and palaeoartist, affiliated with the University of Portsmouth, UK. My technical research is focused on pterosaurs - Mesozoic flying reptiles - but my artwork has introduced me to a wide array of different fossil animals that are just as interesting. I work as a freelance author, consultant and artist: check out my work at MarkWitton.com, follow me on Twitter @MarkWitton, and browse my books here. Contact me at wittonprints[at]gmail.com. Due to volume of email I can't always reply to messages, but I do my best.